Teaching moment for installing decoders

[mu26aeh]

I'm still very much a novice at installing DCC hard wired decoders in locomotives.  I read about using a multimeter/ohm meter to check continuity etc to see if things are wired correctly.  Can someone fill me in on how this works, and what setting on the meter to use ?

PS:  I have one, but for the life of me can't find it this morning to post a picture of.  Probably best to just go buy a new one.  In that case, any preferences ?  If I find mine, I will post photo of it.

[Greg Elmassian]

Google is your friend:

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-use-a-multimeter

Greg

[drgw0579]

What tends to "let the smoke out of a decoder" is when you manage to have the track side (red and black) come into contact with the "motor side" (orange and gray) of most any decoder.  If I can, i use my multimeter to check for continuity between the motor poles and the frame.   Doing this has saved more than one decoder in my experience. 

Others will certainly have more details, but for me it boils down to something simple.  I shorted a motor wire against the frame.  This sometimes happens when I try to route wires inside a kato-split frame and the wire is pierced by a sharp edge of the frame.  btw, ESU wires seem to have very soft insulation and in my experience are easier to nick.

Bill Kepner

(its always humorous to me when I program an ESU decoder with the LokProgrammer and come across the "smoke option".

[peteski]

We have to always remember that decoders are delicate pieces of electronic equipment. After all the are miniature computers. Any shorts between any of the outputs and the track voltage can be fatal.  Maybe not to the entire decoder (just its output transistors that fry), but since those are really too small to be replaced by an average modeler, the entire decoder is considered toasted.  But making sure that there are no shorts is not brain surgery, so possibilities of frying a decoder are minimized if one is not ham-fisted or absent-minded.